


Touched

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Comfort Sex, Community: spn_masquerade, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mark of Cain, Post-Episode: s10e14 The Executioner's Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 05:04:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4906603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fight with Cain, Cas goes to Dean's room and tends to his wounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touched

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a [prompt](http://spn-masquerade.livejournal.com/6017.html?thread=1831553#t1831553) on SPN Masquerade.
> 
> Not betaed; apologies for any mistakes.

Dean leaves the room, and Castiel can still feel his touch.

On his shoulder; the same place where Dean’s body once bore the mark of his own hand. If Dean were the kind of man to premeditate his touches, to allow them meaning, then perhaps Castiel would waste time thinking over the implications of that fact, wondering what Dean was trying to say. 

But Dean isn’t, and so Castiel doesn’t. He doesn’t truly need to. He may be no expert in human communication, but _Thank you_ and _I’m sorry_? Those, he knows when he sees them.

Sam sits at the kitchen table, head bowed over his hands, not moving. Castiel pulls out a chair and sits beside him.

They are silent for a long moment.

“You said Dean was in trouble,” Castiel prods, at length. “What did you mean?”

“You know, Cas.” Sam’s eyes are red-rimmed, his voice low and even. Loss is a great deadener. “You know.” 

Sam is right, of course. Castiel isn’t sure what other answer, if any, he was hoping for.

He expects that to be the end of their conversation, but after a second, Sam takes a shuddering breath and says, “He just agreed with me.” He looks down and then can’t seem to move, as though his head has grown too heavy for his shoulders. “He’s humoring me. Only time he ever does that is when he’s given up.”

Castiel’s shoulder still tingles. It feels like a burn after the heat source has been taken away, but before the pain kicks in: a memory of human sensation. He thinks about how pale Dean looked under the bunker’s harsh lights. The heaviness in his every step. How the cuts on his forehead stood out against his skin.

“I could try talking to him,” he offers. “If you like.”

Sam smiles. It’s a hopeless, watery thing. “Yeah,” he says. “You can try.”

\----

There’s no answer when Castiel taps at Dean’s bedroom door. On another day, he might assume Dean to be sleeping, but now he waits another moment and then opens the door. When he steps into the room, the light is out.

“You don’t gotta check up on me, Cas.” Dean is in front of the washstand, facing the small mirror, but his eyes are unfocused, as though he isn’t even trying to see his own face. He sighs. “Or maybe you do. Shit, I don’t know.”

Castiel doesn’t reply. He stands in the doorway until Dean straightens and turns to look at him. There is a bruise starting to come up on Dean’s left cheekbone. His face will be swollen by morning. In the dim light, the cuts on his forehead no longer appear bloody. They could just be dirt or soot; marks that Castiel could wipe away with a swipe of his thumb.

Mentally, he catalogues Dean’s other injuries. He’s been moving slowly and painfully since the fight with Cain. Probably, he’s bruised all over. A cracked rib or two seems likely. From his willingness to let Sam drive home, Castiel infers a wrenched arm or shoulder—though it could as easily be simple exhaustion that kept Dean riding shotgun. Castiel can see it in his posture, the way he slumps like a puppet dangling from its strings. It is in his downcast eyes and the heaviness of his voice, the half-heartedness of his efforts to convince Sam he still believes he might be saved.

It is all so hopeless.

So hopeless, and there’s nothing Castiel can do to fix it. He doesn’t even know where to begin.

Cuts and bruises and sprains—those are concrete things. Castiel knows where he is with them, He reaches out to touch his fingertips to Dean’s forehead just as Dean begins to frown and says, “Cas, why are you—?”

Dean breaks off as Castiel’s fingers brush his skin. Ducks out from under his hand.

Castiel frowns. “You’re hurt,” he says. “Let me help.”

“And _you’re_ still on borrowed time,” Dean points out. “I ain’t letting you waste your juice on this.” He makes a vague up-and-down gesture, indicating the whole of himself. “Nothing a few beers and a few painkillers won’t fix.”

Castiel watches his face. The incipient scowl; the shutters ready to come down. If he argues this point, Dean likely won’t speak to him for the rest of the evening.

“Fine,” he says, and walks toward the bed. Dean’s duffel sits on top of it. There will be a medical kit in there somewhere: Band-Aids and bandages and antiseptic and Tylenol.

Dean stops him with a hand on his arm. “Dude. What are you doing?”

Castiel ignores him and reaches into the bag. He roots around until his fingers close around the medical kit.

“You do know that’s my laundry, right?” Dean says. “Look, you got a dirty sock fetish, that’s your business, but man, take it somewhere else.” The humor in his voice is forced, his tiredness leaking through the cracks.

“Sit.” Castiel pulls out the kit and jerks his head in the direction of the bed. 

Dean blinks back at him. The shine of his eyes in the dim room is disconcerting. From this angle, Castiel can’t see the green of them, or their expression. They could be polished mirrors, blank screens. The image settles itself in his head, and he leans across to turn on the lamp in an attempt to dislodge it.

“Cas,” Dean says, behind him. “You don’t gotta do this. You’ve done enough already. Taking the Blade, being smart enough not to trust me with the location—” The tiniest of pauses. “That’s enough.”

There is no such thing as enough. Castiel understands that well, these days. Sometimes, when he’s alone, he wonders if the knowledge is a simple hangover from humanity—the desperate clinging to existence, the desperate denial of its finitude. Now though, sitting in front of Dean—Dean, with his cuts and bruises and his human warmth and human terror and the broken heart still beating in his chest—he feels it as truth.

“And if you gave up, every time somebody told you’d done enough? Where would you be now, Dean?”

Dean snorts. “Six feet under, I guess.” He looks down at his hands. There are bruises on his knuckles, too. The skin is broken there. “But it ain’t the same thing.”

Castiel just looks at him. Watches his exhaustion war with his guilt and win—for now, at least—as he sinks down onto the mattress. 

He extricates an antiseptic wipe from its wrapper and reaches out to close his fingers around Dean’s wrist, raising his hand to the light. When he touches it to the edge of the first cut, Dean flinches minutely, takes in a sharp little breath. It is involuntary; childish. Not something Dean would let him see if this were any other day, if this were the aftermath of any other fight.

Castiel runs his thumb over the back of Dean’s hand. 

Dean flinches at that, too, but doesn’t pull away.

Castiel watches Dean’s face as he works. He’s looking at his hands again, not meeting Castiel’s eyes, as though he thinks that if he stares at the bruises on his knuckles long enough, everything else will go away. Castiel finishes cleaning the cuts, slow and steady, and dabs ointment onto them. Holds on a second longer than necessary when he is done, holding his breath, waiting for Dean to pull away and shut him out.

There are other, better ways to make everything else go away—at least for a little while.

It has been a long time. Since before the Mark; since before Castiel got his grace back. That night in Rexford, it wasn’t Dean who needed comfort.

It has been a long time, and Dean won’t ask, Dean never _asks_ , but he doesn’t pull away, either.

Castiel shifts closer to him. Turns his attention to the cuts on Dean’s face.

This time, Dean doesn’t wince at the antiseptic. After a moment, his eyes drift shut. Castiel knows better than to assume that he’s starting to relax—more likely, it’s simply that he can’t bear to look Castiel in the eyes right now. 

Castiel takes advantage of the moment anyway. It’s rare that he has the chance to simply look at Dean, unquestioned, and he feels the compulsion more keenly now than he did before his time as a human. Look at Dean; remember him, now, in this moment, because moments slip past more quickly than sand through an hourglass. The two days’ stubble at his jaw. (How often does Dean look in mirrors, now? How often does he linger long enough to meet his own eyes?) The shadows of his eyelashes and the soft bow of his mouth. The dark circles under his eyes and the creases at their corners.

He must pause to look a moment too long, because then Dean turns his head into Castiel’s hand and says, “Get on with it, I ain’t gonna break.”

His voice falters a little as he says it, and Castiel thinks about dropping the ritual of wound-tending and drawing him into an embrace. Murmuring reassurances against his skin, promising him hope and faith and protection.

It’s too soon. Dean won’t allow that, not yet. Might not allow it at all.

“You’re right,” Castiel says instead, voice carefully neutral, and reaches for a fresh wipe.

Dean still has his eyes closed. He is hiding—still, after all this time, afraid to show this part of himself, shuttering it away in its own private night.

But then, that’s always how this works. They feel their way to one another in the darkness, and part again before the lights come on.

Castiel balls up the used antiseptic wipes and leaves them on the shelf above the bed. Any other time, Dean might grumble at his untidiness, but his eyes are still closed. Castiel takes Dean’s hand and lifts it from his lap, and they blink open again. Dean’s expression is hazy for a moment, as though he’s just waking up. 

Castiel moves to touch Dean’s wrist. It’s hot; a little swollen. Definitely injured. Dean’s eyes widen at his touch, the only indicator of pain that he gives. Castiel lets his fingers stay there a moment longer anyway, feeling the shift of tendons, the thin skin, the beat of Dean’s pulse under his hand. So fragile a part of the human body. 

So strange that he should think of it that way. 

Everything about humans is fragile. Impermanent. Castiel has always known that. He knew it for thousands of years without ever feeling the ache of it.

He didn’t know, then, how solid a soul could seem. How terrifying it could be to feel it slip through your fingers.

His thumb grazes the edge of Dean’s sleeve. “You should take your shirt off,” he says.

Dean blinks at him again. His eyes are uncertain. “Cas,” he says, “I don’t think—”

“I need to bandage your wrist,” Castiel tells him, and there’s a flicker of what might be relief or disappointment or neither, and then Dean does as he’s told, folding his good arm—the one with the Mark—in against his body and holding the other one out.

He is very still while Castiel wraps his injured wrist. He doesn’t close his eyes again, but he watches Castiel’s hands. The rhythm of them as he wraps the bandage. Touch and movement: simple things to concentrate on. 

Castiel finishes what he’s doing and ties off the bandage. He places his palm against Dean’s chest, on his ribcage, where he can see a bruise beginning to form beneath the skin. Dean breathes in hard through his teeth. He must have landed heavily on the floor during the fight, or been thrown into something with great violence. Castiel leaves his hand there, narrowing his eyes in concentration as he summons a single thread of his grace.

Dean frowns at him. “I said don’t do that.”

“I’m just examining the injury, Dean. This won’t tax me.” Castiel stays where he is, and when he is satisfied Dean won’t pull away from him, he reaches out with that tendril of grace—out, and into Dean, feeling the fibers of muscle and the edges of bone.

The ribs are bruised, not broken. Satisfied, Castiel makes to retreat—but something catches at him, holds his grace there a moment longer.

It’s a simple fact of healing that when he touches another being with his grace, he touches a piece of that being’s soul. Dean’s soul is a part of the furniture of Castiel’s existence—though he has found it hard to look at of late. But now—now, it calls out for him. He cannot ignore it.

What he feels when he touches it is absence. There is a dark hollow there inside of Dean, empty as the spaces between the stars. 

It is so desperately lonely.

“Cas. Hey, Cas.” Dean snaps the fingers of his good hand before Castiel’s face.

Castiel blinks and finds Dean watching him, expression still guarded. It takes him a moment to compose himself. “It’s just bruised,” he says aloud. “You should take some painkillers.”

Obediently, Dean grabs the bottle out of the medical kit, chasing the pills with a swallow from the flask of whiskey he keeps in his duffel. He winces—either from the bitterness of the pills-and-whiskey combination, or the pain in his ribs—then sets the flask down and meets Castiel’s eyes.

“Thanks, Cas,” he says. “I mean—I do—you know.”

“I know.” Castiel pauses. He reaches out, takes Dean’s good hand again, and just holds it, nothing more. Dean blinks rapidly, but he lets Castiel hold onto him. “I can leave now,” Castiel tells him. “If you prefer. Let you get some sleep.”

Dean’s shoulders slump, just a fraction of an inch. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I guess that’d be best.”

Castiel waits, Dean’s hand still clasped in his own. “Or I could not,” he says.

Dean looks away. He wets his lips, his fingers curling around Castiel’s. “You should go.”

“Probably,” Castiel agrees, and doesn’t move. 

“Cas—” Dean breaks off, still not looking at him, and so Castiel lifts one hand to stroke the uninjured side of his face. He brushes his thumb along Dean’s cheekbone, down his cheek; feels the minute twitch of his jaw as he fights with himself.

“I don’t want to go,” he offers, and Dean finally looks up again, wide-eyed. There is something new in his expression, bruised and vulnerable and _afraid_ , and Castiel wants badly to touch him, so he does. He leans in—slowly, telegraphing what he’s about to do—and presses a soft kiss to the corner of Dean’s mouth.

Dean’s eyes are closed when he pulls away. He holds himself very still for a moment. In the lamplight, Castiel’s shadow carves his face in two, a light half and a dark.

Dean turns his head. Nuzzles against Castiel’s cheek, his lips not quite brushing the skin. Tentative; barely a touch.

Castiel lets go of his hand, wraps his arms around Dean’s waist—careful not to jostle his bruised ribs—and eases closer. Then kisses him again.

Full on the mouth, this time, open and inviting. Dean remains still a moment longer, then parts his lips and wraps his arms around Castiel’s shoulders and melts into it, into Castiel. At last, the tension holding him upright bleeds out of him, and Castiel tightens his grip.

Exhaustion likely has more to do with it than anything having gotten better, but Castiel will work with what he has.

As gently as he’s able, he lays Dean down atop the covers, casting an apologetic glance down at Dean’s injuries when he lets go and Dean takes in a sharp breath. One corner of Dean’s mouth twitches up in something that’s almost a smile. “You can quit it with the kid gloves, Cas,” he says. “Hell, I’ve had worse and still went home with the nurse who strapped me up when she finished her shift.”

It’s a ridiculous remark, totally inappropriate, but Castiel hears it for what it is: Dean’s way of saying, _Let’s pretend this is some other night. Let’s pretend it was a nest of vampires, or a rugaru, or some two-bit demon that banged me up. Let me forget about it for a little while._

Impossible. But this particular flavour of denial is as close as Dean will get to acceptance tonight; so Castiel will accept it, too. 

He kicks off his shoes and stretches out beside Dean, pressed close along his good side, their mouths moving together, soft and slow. He would be content just to do this, but it is Dean who reaches up to curl a hand around the back of his neck and urge him in closer, deepening their kisses. His other hand, the injured one, hovers over Castiel’s hip for a moment before venturing to rest there.

Castiel pulls back, so their lips are not quite touching. “You’re sure?” he says. “You are still injured.”

“Like I said. You’re not gonna break me.” There’s a strange emphasis to the phrase this time, but Castiel doesn’t ask what it means. If he’s going to get through to Dean right now, he knows that it won’t be with questions.

Instead, he nods acquiescence and presses his lips to Dean’s temple, feathers tiny kisses along the shell of his ear. He sucks at Dean’s earlobe, eliciting a squirm and a laugh that’s mostly breath, then kisses his way down Dean’s neck, over his bare shoulder, along his collarbone. His hands stroke slowly at Dean’s sides, palms flat against the bare skin, skating carefully around the edges of Dean’s bruises.

Dean moans quietly when his thumb brushes over a nipple, so he does it again, leans in to tease with the tip of his tongue. It is good to taste the salt of Dean’s skin, to feel him grow pliant under Castiel’s hands. It eases the nervous tightness in Castiel’s chest, the fear humming beneath the surface of his grace. Dean is still here, beneath him, with him. Still touchable.

They have not lost him yet.

Castiel kisses his way down Dean’s chest, down the soft part of his stomach. Dips his tongue into Dean’s navel while he unfastens the button of Dean’s jeans and pulls them, and his underwear, out of the way. When he looks up, Dean shakes his head.

“You know you’re weird, right?” he says, but there’s fondness in his eyes. Something else, too; something he is holding at bay, at least for the present. Castiel won’t question it, not right now. He will let Dean have this moment, be with him in it, apart from all the darker ones that surround it. He needs it, too.

Dean is half-hard now, and he whispers a quiet, “Fuck,” when Castiel’s fingers brush the length of his cock.

Castiel ignores it and continues his kisses, the teasing trail of his fingers. He mouths at the sensitive skin of Dean’s inner thigh, at the ridges of his hipbones, noses against the soft trail of hair beneath his navel. Some other time, he might leave tiny bruises with his teeth, dig his fingernails in hard enough to mark—but not tonight. There has been enough violence around them, this past day.

It’s all they need, anyway. He can feel the blood thrumming faster in Dean’s veins, the way every muscle in his body goes taut and his cock hardens under Castiel’s fingers. Dean doesn’t beg aloud—he has never been given to vocal theatrics during sex—but there’s an urgency to his breathing, to the way his hands find Castiel’s shoulders and tighten there. When Castiel finally takes pity, running his lips up Dean’s shaft and wrapping them around the head of his cock, he sags back against the mattress with an audible sound of relief.

There’s a power in doing this that Castiel didn’t understand until he actually tried it. Something about the vulnerability of a man with his cock in somebody else’s mouth; and something about the simple giving of pleasure. The way Dean gives himself over to it wholly, as he does with almost nothing else.

This is as close as they’ll get tonight to true connection, and the thought has Castiel reaching up, interlacing his fingers with those of Dean’s good hand.

Dean squeezes back for a moment, then disengages and brings his hand up to tangle in Castiel’s hair, urging him on. That’s always a sign that he is doing something right, and Castiel gives a gratified hum around Dean’s cock, tasting the salt of precome, feeling the heat of Dean’s skin on his tongue.

But a few moments later, Dean is sitting up, cupping the side of Castiel’s face to stop him. Castiel pulls off, concern unfurling inside him as he meets Dean’s eyes. They’re dark, intent, and Dean is breathing hard.

“Cas,” he says. “Cas, you keep that up and I’m not gonna make it to the main event.” He licks his lips, a gesture that is equal parts nervousness and desire, and his gaze flicks to the side of the bed. 

It’s been a long time since they slept together, but Castiel assumes there is lubricant stashed underneath. Even before Dean had a home, he made a point of hiding it instead of keeping it in his duffel, where Sam might stumble across it looking to borrow a razor or a pair of socks.

Castiel raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t want to ask, _You’re sure?_ again, but he’s a little surprised. He’d thought Dean too battered and too tired for anything more vigorous than this.

Apparently Dean reads the question in his eyes, because he glances away, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth, for a second before looking back up at Castiel. 

“Don’t gimme the lecture, Cas,” he says. “I just.” He pauses, swallows. “Wanna feel you, okay?” He looks away again—as though he has made an unreasonable request, instead of asking for something so simple. 

Instead of answering, Castiel leans in to kiss Dean on the mouth again. Deep and heated, tongues sliding against one another. Castiel puts all of himself into it. All of the things he can’t say.

Then he breaks away, and reaches under the bed.

He takes his time, working Dean open with two, then three of his fingers, kissing him endlessly until he stops talking, stops worrying, stops doing anything but making low, broken sounds into Castiel’s mouth, limbs trembling, clutching fistfuls of the bedsheets. Only then does Castiel pull away to undress himself, his breath catching in his throat at the wordless, protesting noise that comes from Dean when Castiel’s fingers slide out of his body.

Castiel could be naked with a wave of his hand—it would not take much of his power—but he understands that they are doing this the human way, tonight. Feeling everything, even the frustrating parts. So he lays one hand on Dean’s hip, tracing circles there with his slicked fingertips, and fumbles his buttons open with the other.

It takes too long. Every second that he isn’t inside of Dean, isn’t touching every part of him, is too long. He does it anyway: loosens the knot of his tie and pulls it over his head, unbuttons his shirt one-handed, kicks his pants onto the floor. Want sings in his veins. Every tiny movement Dean makes reverberates through his grace like a stone dropped into a pool. When he’s finally undressed, he uncaps the lubricant, slicks his cock with trembling hands and lifts Dean’s hips.

Dean breathes in sharply, and it’s a pained sound, not an aroused one. Castiel stops, frowning. Then he sees the problem and leans across to grab a pillow. 

When he turns back, Dean is reaching for him with his good hand, eyes open and a little wild. “Hey, did I say you could stop?” he says, but there’s a tremor in his voice that gives the lie to his bravado.

Castiel shushes him with a kiss. “Did I say I was going to?” he says, against Dean’s mouth, and feels him slowly relax again.

They kiss once more, and then Castiel pulls away to settle the pillow under Dean’s hips, so he won’t have to strain his bruised ribs to hold himself up.

“Okay,” Dean admits, in a strained voice. “Not a bad idea.” The _now get on with it_ is implied, and Castiel complies, lining his aching cock up and finally, finally pressing inside.

They’ve done this infrequently enough that Castiel still wonders at it. The heat of Dean’s body around him, the sweet, dizzy feeling of being _inside_ another person, as close as it’s possible to get on the physical plane. The way Dean’s head falls back onto the mattress, eyelids fluttering closed as his mouth opens around a gasp of pleasure. His good hand reaches out for Castiel again, but he aborts the gesture and lets it fall to his side, grasping the bedsheets instead.

Castiel holds himself there for a moment, taking in the sight, the feeling. The simple human pleasure of it. Knowing that, for this moment, he still has Dean.

It’s only when Dean’s eyes open again and he says, “ _Cas_ ,” a tremble running through him that Castiel feels from the inside, that Castiel gathers himself and begins to move.

He is as careful in this as he has been in everything else, letting the heat of it burn slowly, pulling out of Dean’s body and pressing in again in a steady, measured rhythm. It’s worth his patience for the way Dean finally loses himself in it, every muscle taut, his pupils wide and dark and focused entirely on Castiel’s face, seeing only him, instead of blood and destruction.

Castiel draws it out as long as he can bear, a relentless tease that leaves both of them shaking, eyes locked, as lost in the moment as they can manage to get right now. He doesn’t want it to be over. Doesn’t want them to have to start thinking again.

Only when he can stand it no longer does he quicken his pace, wrapping his fist around Dean’s cock and working him with firm, sure strokes. His touch has Dean squeezing his eyes shut again, and he bites his lip, shuddering as he spills over Castiel’s hand, sudden and warm. 

For a moment, in the aftermath, an expression comes over his face that is not quite peace, but something akin to it. 

Castiel feels the ache of it at his heart. How fleeting it is.

He shuts out the thought, closes his eyes and concentrates only on sensation. Drives his cock in deep once, twice more, and follows, his orgasm wringing itself out of him like a sigh of relief.

Castiel catches his weight on his forearms as he sags forward. Beneath him, Dean’s eyes are still fixed on his face, but the peaceful look is gone. Already, the weight of the world is back on his shoulders. Castiel kisses him between his eyes, and he ducks his head.

“Dean.” Castiel cups Dean’s cheek, turns Dean’s face back toward him.

“Cas.” Dean looks at him tiredly.

Castiel wipes his other hand off on the sheets, then reaches down with it. By touch, he finds the raised brand of the Mark on Dean’s arm and covers it with his palm.

Dean shoots a startled glance at Castiel’s hand, then meets his eyes again. For a moment, the struggle within him is nakedly visible: the urge to bring down the shutters warring with the desire to stay here, wrapped up in Castiel, _with_ him.

Castiel understands. He does not dare hope that Dean will choose the latter.

Sighing, he extricates himself, sliding out of Dean and sitting upright. He digs in Dean’s duffel for a towel.

“Cas,” Dean says again. He pauses for a second. “You know, you really oughta go.”

Castiel turns back to him, but says nothing for a moment. He cleans himself up, then offers the towel to Dean, allowing him an excuse to look away.

“I would still prefer not to,” he says.

Dean doesn’t look at him. He balls up the towel and drops it on the floor beside the bed, then sinks back against the pillows. “I know, Cas,” he says. “I know.”

His eyes are closed. He says nothing more, and so Castiel takes his silence for acquiescence, crawling up the bed to lie alongside him.

“Put the light out?” Dean says, after a moment.

Castiel turns out the lamp and reaches for Dean in the darkness. He is surprised when Dean allows himself to be held—but he’ll take it, hold onto it for as long as he can. 

He doubts that that will be long enough.

He can see little without the light. But his fingertips find the edge of the Mark in the darkness, and rest is a long time in coming.


End file.
